Bagehot

High pitch, low politics

Dog-whistle politics can take you only so far

OVER the past few weeks, a new expression has entered the Westminster lexicon: dog-whistle politics. It means putting out a message that, like a high-pitched dog-whistle, is only fully audible to those at whom it is directly aimed. The intention is to make potential supporters sit up and take notice while avoiding offending those to whom the message will not appeal. As with many vivid idioms, its origins are Australian. It seems likely that Lynton Crosby, the Tories' Australian campaign director, is responsible for importing dog-whistle politics to Britain.

Dog-whistle politics explains why the Conservative leader, Michael Howard, has been making such a big thing out of illegal gypsy and traveller encampments this week and why the Tories are determined to keep up the attack on the government's immigration policies. On March 22nd, Peter Lilley, a former Tory minister, published a pamphlet entitled “Too Much of a Good Thing” attacking government claims about the economic benefits of immigration. Both Mr Howard and Mr Lilley were scrupulous in the language they used. Mr Howard made it clear that gypsies' ethnicity was not an issue. All he cared about was “fair play” and “standing up for the right values”. Mr Lilley argued that “some immigration is essential”. Only large-scale immigration of the kind the government had allowed was damaging.

Nothing that Mr Howard or Mr Lilley said could fairly be described as racist. A Labour MP's claim that Tory plans for dealing with the gypsy problem had “the whiff of the gas chamber about them” was absurd. Yet it is also true that racists, bigots and the millions of people who are neither of those things but whose fears are fanned daily by a mendacious press will have pricked up their ears and listened to a message aimed squarely at them. And just in case there was any question about who and what the Tories were appealing to, Mr Howard issued his statement on gypsies astride a platform emblazoned with the party's rather creepy campaign slogan: “Are you thinking what we're thinking?” Thinking, but not quite saying, in other words.

When not shamelessly pandering to prejudice, the Tory campaign has been a series of hit-and-run ambushes on the government's record. Egged on by the Tory tabloids, who have tired of Mr Blair and are desperate to help the Conservatives make a fight of this election, issues come and go with bewildering speed. For a couple of days, immigration dominates the headlines, then hospital waiting lists, then abortion, then tax, followed by gypsies and tax again. The BBC seems willing to go along with a news agenda set by the right-wing and populist Daily Mail. All are agreed that the Tories are doing surprisingly well in making the running against a flat-footed government. Labour, its once lightning-fast campaigning reflexes dulled by eight years of office, ploddingly tries to bat away one accusation, while another, entirely different, flies past its ears.

In his saturnine way, Mr Howard, for the first time in months, has looked as if he is enjoying himself. Excitable Tory MPs, taking heart from the vigour and slickness of their party's campaign and further encouraged by a couple of opinion polls last month that showed a narrowing of the gap with Labour, were daring to hope that in response to Mr Howard's whistle the voters were at last pricking up their ears and paying attention. Enough of them, perhaps, to cast doubt on the outcome of the election.

Yet maybe Mr Howard is merely whistling up his most faithful hounds. The challenge for the Tories hasn't changed. It is to find a way to appeal beyond their base vote of about 32% to some of the solid 60% of the electorate who support parties of the centre-left. When Mr Howard took over as leader of the party in November 2003, he made some of the right noises, but the policies he inherited from his predecessor were left more or less unchanged. Worse, the one good thing that Iain Duncan Smith was associated with—an incoherent but sincere attempt to identify the Conservative Party with the needs of the poor and the excluded—was forgotten.

Oliver Letwin, the shadow chancellor, hints that when the party reveals the rest of its tax plans at the beginning of the official election campaign they will be aimed at reducing the burden on poor working families rather than bribing middle England. He maintains that any tax cuts should say something about how the Tories would like to be seen as a party. Mr Letwin does his best to give his party a more pleasing aspect, but with Mr Howard and Mr Crosby in charge it is thankless work.

Whistling in the wind

Even on its own limited terms, their snarling campaign may already be running out of puff. ICM, whose poll for the Guardian last month raised Tory hopes, this week dashed them again. It wasn't just that Labour, following last week's budget, had extended its lead over the Conservatives from three points to eight, although that was bad enough.

Worse, ICM revealed that Labour is well ahead of the Conservatives on seven out of the eight issues that voters say are most important to them. Only on immigration and asylum did the Tories have a lead, and only 8% of respondents said it was the most important issue to them. Most ominously, Labour was rated as the best party to manage the economy by 41% of voters compared with 24% for the Conservatives. In January, a poll by Populus for the Times found similar strength for Labour on the big issues. Labour may have disappointed them in all sorts of ways, but for all that, the voters who Mr Howard must reach are still comfortable with it.

Mr Howard's problem is the one which Robert Jackson, a Tory MP who defected to Labour in January identified. “I think that Michael is privately a nice man,” said Mr Jackson. “Publicly he only has two registers. One is scorn and the other is anger and that is too limited a range.”